


Call to Arms

by calloftherunningtide



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1371121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calloftherunningtide/pseuds/calloftherunningtide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan was washing the dishes when she received the call from Gallifrey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call to Arms

Susan was washing the dishes when she received the call from Gallifrey.

It was a ridiculously domestic image, as well as an unnecessary one. Technological advancement had rendered most chores irrelevant by the twenty second century, but, from time to time, Susan liked to do them herself. After all, nothing brought you down to Earth more than a spot of ironing.

The plate fell from her hands, shattering as it hit the ground in a shower of bubbles and lukewarm water. David came rushing in a moment later to find his wife leaning against the draining board with her head in her hands.

_Return to Gallifrey. Return to Gallifrey. Return to Gallifrey._

“Susan?” David asked, gingerly touching her shoulder, “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him with wide eyes and suds in her hair. Her beloved husband. He was older now, with traces of grey in his hair and fine lines around his eyes, but he was still the man that she’d fallen in love with. Still kind. Still brave. Still _human_.

She couldn’t tell him.

“Oh, nothing.” She was just one lonely exile. She lived quietly, without significance or renown. She wasn’t _important_. With any luck, nobody would be sent to enforce the command. “Don’t worry about me, David.” 

They came for her three days later.

***

“You are the Time Lord known as ...”

She cut across them before they could finish. She hadn’t used that name in many years and she had no intention of starting now. Not on the doorstep of the house that she and David had built together in the aftermath of the war. Not with their children playing in the garden, just out of sight.

“No. My name is Susan. Susan Campbell.”

They didn’t respond to that, but she could see the scepticism in their gaze. They thought that she was an eccentric renegade, just like her grandfather. She wondered why they were so interested in tracking her, of all people, all the way to Earth.

“President Romanadvoratrelundar has ordered you to return to Gallifrey.”

_The President?_

Susan looked back at the house. David wouldn’t return from the fields for a few more hours. Barbara and Ian were playing happily in the sandpit they’d constructed on a balmy June evening a few years ago.

Her family would be safe without her for a _few_ minutes.

“I hope this won’t take long,” she said, as she dragged her eyes away and moved – uninvited and deliberately independent – towards their ship. It was a newer model than her grandfather’s TARDIS, accurate enough to return her to Earth within a few minutes of her departure.

She didn’t even think to say goodbye.

***

When Susan stepped out of the TARDIS, she was assaulted by the sights and sounds of a childhood that she’d almost forgotten. The air was alive with the vibration of machinery and the soft hum of distant spacecraft. Before her escorts whisked her indoors, she caught a glimpse of shining silver trees silhouetted against a bright orange sky.

It wasn’t home – her home was a simple wooden house with finger paintings pinned to the fridge and a bowl of freshly picked fruit on the kitchen table – but, just for a moment, it gave her pause.

A group of soldiers from the Chancellery Guard led her along winding white corridors, deep into the heart of the Capitol. She could have asked a thousand questions, but she was canny enough to know that they wouldn’t be able to answer her. The only person who could tell her what she needed to know was the person who had sent for her in the first place.

President Romanadvoratrelundar was a slender woman with blonde hair and intelligent eyes. Her bodyguard was, rather unexpectedly, a human dressed in ragged animal skins, hovering at her side like a loyal wolfhound. Her piercing gaze was far more unsettling that the staser pistols carried by the guards, but, fortunately, all of them were dismissed as soon as Susan arrived.

“Welcome back to Gallifrey, Susan,” said Romanadvoratrelundar, rising from her desk and shuffling a sheaf of papers to obscure the map that she and her bodyguard had been studying. Susan caught a glimpse of a dozen model ships, lined up on the desk like the pieces on a chessboard, before they were swept out of sight. She could have sworn that one of them was a small blue box. “What did you think of the TARDIS I sent for you?”

“TARDIS?”

President Romanadvoratrelundar smiled at Susan’s consternation. She’d thought up the acronym herself – many years ago, when she and her grandfather had left Gallifrey and the rest of the Time Lords far behind them – and she’d never expected to hear it in common usage.

“You’re a very influential woman, Mrs Campbell.”

“I’ve been away from Gallifrey for too long to have any influence on the Time Lords.”

“But your grandfather has not.”

“My grandfather?”

Susan’s hearts started to beat a little faster. It had been decades since she’d last seen her grandfather. That wasn’t particularly long for a Time Lord, but, until that fateful visit to war-torn London, they’d rarely been apart. His departure had been sudden and painful. Even now, after all these years, a part of her was still waiting for the TARDIS to materialise at the bottom of the garden.

“An old friend. We used to travel together.”

Susan blinked. She hadn’t expected that and she wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. It certainly explained Romanadvoratrelundar’s human bodyguard, as well as her interest in a lonely exile living on a planet many thousands of light years away, but it didn’t given Susan a reason to trust her. Even if Romanadvoratrelundar was telling the truth, Susan didn’t know anything about the man that her grandfather had become in the years they’d been apart.

“Why have you brought me here, Romanadvoratrelundar?”

“You can call me Romana, if you prefer.”

“Time Lords don’t usually adopt shortened versions of their names.”

“I’ve grown used to it over the years.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Even then, Romana didn’t answer immediately. She moved across the room to the wide windows overlooking the Mountains of Solace and Solitude. The snow-capped peaks glistened in the light of the twin suns.

“You must have been able to feel it, Susan,” she murmured, gazing out over the shimmering landscape, “Stirring at the edges of the universe.”

“Feel what?”

But Susan knew what she was referring to. She had never attended the Academy, but she was still a Time Lord. She didn’t need formal training to know that something terribly wrong was coming to life in the darkness beyond space and time.

“The Daleks are preparing for war.”

“War?” repeated Susan. Familiar images – refugees fighting for survival in the abandoned cities of Europe and robomen with empty gazes – swam to the forefront of her mind. Her hands clenched into fists. “With the Time Lords?”

“With all the temporal powers.”

“And you’ve brought me here to fight for you?”

“You worked as a peace officer in the aftermath of the Dalek invasion of Earth, Susan. Your knowledge of Dalek technology may prove useful to us.”

 _Worked_. Past tense.

“And my grandfather? Where is he? How will he help you to win your war?”

“It is not _my_ war,” Romana responded sharply, “It will span the whole of time and space. The Doctor has his role to play. I hope you will not shy away from yours.”

Romana turned away from the window, fixing her eyes on Susan.

“Will you fight for Gallifrey, Susan?”

For the silver trees and the snow-capped mountains? For the Capitol? For the Time Lords who had exiled her grandfather and forced her to grow up in loneliness and fear?

“No.”

For the simple pleasure of doing chores while her children played in the garden. For the warmth of her husband’s embrace and the satisfaction of a successful harvest. For _home_.

“I’ll fight for David and our children. I’ll fight for my grandfather.”

Romana smiled.

“Good.”


End file.
